A Feminist Rushes A Sorority

kind of but not really

When I thought about what my college experience would be like as a high schooler, I never for a second even slightly entertained the faintest thought of joining a sorority. As a self-identified feminist, as someone who thought chapstick was a full face of makeup, and as someone who had about as much interest in enduring mosh-pits of grinding frat boys as she did in microbial taxonomy (read: none) I just had zero interest in what I, frankly, saw as an antiquated, possibly even anti-feminist and insulting tradition. Which is why when I pressed “send” on my sorority recruitment application last December, nobody was more surprised than I was.

Though I hadn’t entered college with a clear goal of finding my long, lost non-genetic “sisters,” …

Musings of a High School Feminist

I don’t remember when I discovered feminism. I don’t remember how I got the link to a feminist blog that I started to read, or the first time I thought to myself, “I am a feminist!”

But I am so glad that it happened.

I love feminism. I love the things it’s done for me – the way it makes me feel powerful and beautiful and in control. I love the way it’s opened up my eyes to the ways that I’m missing out – and all the ways that I can get around those things.

And that’s why it’s so confusing to me why none of my friends agree with me!

Being a feminist in high school is hard. This morning, for example, I was thinking …

My First Heartbreak: How Feminism Got Me Through It

the graphic version

This past week my boyfriend dumped me. Now, under normal circumstances, recovery would have been simple. At first, I’d turn the radio randomly to any given pop song where a lyric about “looking into each other’s eyes” would inevitably transition into me sobbing, “WE USED TO LOOK INTO EACH OTHER’S EYES. THIS SONG WAS TOTALLY WRITTEN ABOUT ME AND MY PAIN” followed by dramatic, angsty teen tears. Then, there would be a bitch session with my friends as they confirmed that he was in fact always a douchebag and even though he kind of looked like John Mayer that also kind of added to the doucheyness. Knowing my friends, and our love of festively celebrating the fall season, his picture attached to a pumpkin would probably be …

“Body Image Disorder”

Bodies are different for a reason. Embrace it.

At some point in recent history the stance of “I Hate My Body” became a public statement encompassing an entire gender rather than a private thought held by few on particularly bad days. Somewhere along the line, women have lost control of their bodies in the name of society’s glamorization and expectation of self-deprecation. But, as I have learned over the years, loving your body is possible, even for the most self-loathing of us all.

Freshman year was a difficult one for me (a unique story, I know). Though I had been aware of my body in middle school and had brief yet unfortunate love affairs with both my hair straightener and Abercrombie and Fitch in attempts to make my body look …

My Feminist Rant

does the sisterhood include everybody?

First off, I want to clearly state that I’m well informed about feminism and I associate myself with feminism, despite the fact that many things within the feminist movement bother me. For example, the idea that being “slutty like men” is liberating. It’s not. Self respect is for both genders. Liberation is being able to choose whoever you want to sleep with, without damaging yourself or someone else. I can just hear the sound of keys on keyboards typing, “You’re not a feminist. I can sleep around with as many people as I want and I shouldn’t be called a slut!” I’m tired of hearing those rants about using feminism as some excuse for self-damaging yourself. (Yes, too much sex can lead to …

A Reason to Believe in Feminism

I have for you a tale of feminism in its physical manifestation.

It was only weeks ago that I, a nineteen-year-old girl, sat at a window seat on a bus swindling its way down a road in the city one night. Ere long I felt another’s presence, and turned to find a beefy drunkard leering at me as he stumbled to sit by my side. He had prickly grey stubble covering his weathered cheek; bloodshot eyes and thin lips smacked together as he looked me up and down.

‘How ya going, alright?’ He grunted, and I nodded curtly before stepping away and re-settling myself on a different seat, a couple of rows back. I had smelt the Red Label on his stale breath and seen how his eyes had rested …

Banish Girl Hate Today

the result of girl hate.

I’ll admit it: I used to be a hater. After I hit 13, for whatever reason, I started to really, really dislike other girls. I was constantly jealous of them, hated when they talked to my array of (oftentimes disgusting/unworthy) boyfriends and basically wanted nothing to do with anyone with breasts who was outside my usual social circle. I just didn’t like them.

Or so I thought.

Actually, now I see I was brainwashed by society into being jealous of them.

Now, 10 years later, I know that most of my “hatred” for the other (beautiful, smart, talented) ladies around me was actually jealousy. Insecurity. A byproduct of a society that was becoming hypersexualized & overly focused on outward appearances.